As the championships season is about to begin, national federations are announcing their championships. This is the calendar of 2015’s european championships in chronological order. Missing championships will be added progressively.

French Nationals in Sablé-sur-Sarthe is now over. The weather was good and we did all 8 potential flights for a great total of 25 tasks. We finished at the 2nd place for the second consecutive year with a total of 18906 points! Our objective which was staying in the Top 5 is therefore greatly achieved. General ranking is very tight and we missed the first place this year, being only 200 points below the champion Thomas Merceron (19111 points), a very nice guy and talented pilot who deserved the title! Well done Thomas! We truly fought until the last moment, but unfortunately we did some mistakes on the penultimate day, which made us loose our slight advance… and the first place unfortunately. Congratulations also to Nicolas Schwartz, who took the third place.

Good news is: thanks to this good result, I am now the first French pilot, which means that I will be selected for the European Championship in Hungary (2015) and World Championship in Japan (2016) ! It is strange to think that 5 years ago during my first championship my basket banner was n° 44, this year it was n° 7 and next year, I will have the banner n° 1! Incredible! I am not even sure I will give the banner back after next year’s championship!!

Thanks to all competitors and officials, especially to the event director Zoltan Palhegyi who proposed us nice tasks to fly! A special thank also to my amazing team : my co-pilot Guillaume Jouaville, my beloved girlfriend Carine Lallemand and my best friend and driver Clovis Masson. My friend Sean Kavanagh, the developer of OziTarget also deserves a special acknowledgment for all the work done on his great software. Last but not least, thanks Kubicek Balloons both for designing the best Racer balloon ever and for accepting me as a member of the Kubicek Team Factory. I am very proud to fly for you and to represent the Kubicek brand around the world.

This video was made by Zoltan Palhegyi, on the last flying day at French Nationals. The general ranking was very tight and we really needed to make a good last flight! Fortunately, we worked hard, we chose the right launching field (quite far from those of the other competitors) and succeed in reaching the middle of this target on the Hippodrom. The task was a Calculated Rate of Approach (CRT) and the closest area was about to close, so the only remaining solution was to put the marker right in the middle (0,63cm)! My heart stopped beating until I heard the “plok” of the marker on the target. It was such an amazing moment!